This page describes how the ChinaManufacturers.com Editorial Desk researches, writes, dates and corrects its pages. It describes the mechanics, so that a reader can judge any page by checking whether it followed them.
How sources are gathered
Research for each page begins with the documents that create or record the facts the page will state. In order of preference, those are:
- legal instruments: statutes, regulations, executive orders, proclamations and Federal Register notices, and the current revision of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States;
- court decisions, read from the court's own published opinion where it is available;
- regulator and agency publications, including customs guidance, official lists and enforcement statistics, from US and Chinese authorities and international bodies;
- official statistics from national statistical offices, customs authorities and international organizations;
- company filings, such as annual reports filed with securities regulators, for facts about a company.
Law-firm summaries, trade press and industry reports are used to find primary documents and to fill gaps, and are labeled as secondary when they are relied on. A figure available only from a secondary source is stated with that source named, or left out.
How each figure is traced
Each page is written from a fact sheet in which every figure, date and rate is recorded with the document it came from, the page or section where it appears and the date it was read. A figure that could not be confirmed in a document is marked unverified on the fact sheet. Unverified items are either omitted from the published page or stated with the hedge in the sentence itself, such as "reported but not confirmed in an official notice." Shares and ratios that the desk calculates from official tables are labeled as calculations.
Cost is described structurally. The site does not publish prices, freight rates or fees as current fact, with one exception: an amount fixed by law or regulation, stated with its effective period and instrument, such as a customs user fee set by a CBP notice for a named fiscal year.
How the verdicts are set
Every industry and platform page opens with a one-line verdict, and each verdict is set from evidence before the page is written. For an industry, the evidence is trade data: China's share of world exports and of US imports for the relevant tariff chapters, from sources such as UN Comtrade, the WTO's trade statistics and the US Office of Textiles and Apparel, with the years compared stated on the page. Where the global and the US-market answers differ, the page states both in its first section. For a platform or fair, the evidence is the operator's own filings and descriptions of who may sell there, read alongside any regulator listing. A verdict is a summary of that evidence, not a rating of any company.
Dated review of time-sensitive pages
Some subjects move faster than others. US tariff law changed every few weeks during 2025 and 2026, so every tariff and customs figure is stated with its date and its legal instrument, in the form "as of October 2026, under" a named notice. Pages on tariffs, customs procedure and other fast-moving rules are reviewed on a dated schedule against the current tariff schedule and the latest notices, and pending dates that could change a figure, such as an expiring exclusion, are listed on the page.
How dates on pages are set
Each page shows the date it was published and the date it was last modified. The modified date changes only when the content of the page changes. Rebuilding the site, changing its design or correcting markup does not change a page's dates. A page that has been reviewed and found accurate keeps its modified date, because its content has not changed.
When sources conflict
Where two credible sources disagree on a figure or a date, the page prints both, names each source and says how they differ, for example when two official releases give different totals for the same program, or when a regulation's text and an agency's message read differently on the same point. The desk does not silently choose one. Where one source is the governing legal text, the page says so.
Independence
The desk accepts no payment, commission or free service from any business it describes, and the site carries no affiliate links. Companies are named only where a regulator, court, filing or official list names them, and never ranked.
Corrections
Errors are corrected as soon as they are confirmed. A correction to a fact changes the page's modified date. A reader who finds an error, or a newer document that supersedes one cited, can write to [email protected] with the page address, the statement in question and the source that contradicts it. The desk reads every correction request and replies to substantive ones; it cannot answer sourcing requests or questions about specific suppliers.